COVID-19 HAS brought out the best and the worst of the corporate world. Carmakers are producing ventilators, and consumer firms are making hand-cleaning gels. Some others, though, have drawn complaints for their treatment of their employees during the pandemic. Such considerations touch on what sustainable investors call "social" risks, part of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) basket of factors that has grown popular in recent years. Climate change and corporate scandals have led investors to focus on the "E" and the "G". The pandemic brings the "S" into the limelight. Social issues can range from the impact of demography on a firm to its relations with the local community. Moody's, a rating agency, says that $8trn of the debt it rates is exposed to social risks-four times that exposed to environmental ones.
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